1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to strollers for children and, more particularly, to jogging strollers used by a person while jogging, running, or brisk walking.
2. Description of the Background Art
Walking and running are excellent ways to maintain personal health. Physical, aerobic exercise coupled with the fresh-air offered by an outdoor environment can play a critical role in a healthy lifestyle. Parents, especially those of young children and infants, often find themselves faced with a choice between exercise and keeping watch over their children. This is a result of the fact that parents, in many instances, are forced to abandon their outdoor walking and running exercise regimen because the parent must stay at home to mind a young child not yet mature enough to be left alone or to actively participate in the parent's exercise routine.
An interim solution to this problem is the jogging stroller. For example, the “Baby Jogger®” first appeared in the marketplace in the early 1980s to allow parents to bring along their small children in a stroller while they exercised. Presently available jogging strollers suffer, however, from the disadvantage of causing the user—the jogger pushing the stroller—to break their natural running or walking rhythm. The break in this natural rhythm—the natural swinging of the jogger's arms in relation to their legs (e.g., right arm extension with the left leg followed by left arm extension with the right leg)—occurs as the jogger must push the jogging stroller in a desired direction and at a desired rate with one or both hands or forearms. By having one hand or forearm placed on, for example, a handlebar of the stroller, the jogger is unable to freely swing their arms in the aforementioned cross-patterned rhythmical movement with their legs during their running or walking routine. Running, jogging, and walking, therefore, becomes difficult, tedious, and potentially injurious when this normal cross-patterned movement of arms and legs is interrupted.
This interruption of cross-patterned movement is secondary, however, to the possibility of losing control of the jogging stroller and the child therein. Failure to properly maintain constant control over the jogging stroller can result in the jogging stroller accelerating faster than the user (e.g., rolling uncontrolled down a hill), the stroller tipping over, the stroller becoming unstable on certain road surfaces (e.g., loose gravel or dirt) or, in a worst case scenario, the stroller falling into road traffic putting the child inside the jogging stroller at incredible risk of injury. With the safety of a child in the jogging stroller being paramount, the disadvantages and discomfort caused by the interruption of a user's cross-patterned rhythm has often been seen as an unavoidable necessity.
Strollers that may allow a user to remove their hands or forearms from a handle bar or other steering mechanism through a ‘hands free adaptor’—thereby allowing for natural hand-leg cross-rhythms—often rely on the jogger's body motion (e.g., moving forward) to push the stroller forward. These ‘hands free adaptor’ designs suffer from the fact that as the jogger's body (e.g., the jogger's hips or legs) pushes the stroller forward with each stride, there is a fraction of a second in between the jogger's strides—a pause—where the forward momentum of the stroller is interrupted. After the jogger takes each stride and lands on their opposite leg during walking or running, the stroller continues to be pushed forward by the jogger's body. This continued motion, however, is interrupted by the aforementioned pause that occurs between each stride of the jogger resulting in a ‘bump’ or ‘clash of momentum’ between the jogger and the stroller. This pattern repeats throughout the jogger's walking or running routine resulting in unsmooth and unnatural movement as well as a generally chaotic exercise experience for the jogger. The experience is no more enjoyable for the child in the stroller as they are constantly being jolted by the ‘bump’ or ‘clash of momentum.’ Any benefit enjoyed by the hands-free adaptor that allows for natural hand-leg rhythm is entirely discounted by the creation of an entirely new and potentially harmful problem in the form of bumping the jogging stroller and the child therein.
As such, there is a need in the art for a hands-free adaptor with shock absorbing properties that allows the jogger to engage in normal cross-patterned movement of arms and legs when taking a child along for a jog or walk in a jogging stroller without the risk of losing control of the jogging stroller.